loomingevilfandomcom-20200214-history
Festival of cleansing
A yearly Kellos festival held by the church across Terrinoth. It is observed at individual churches across the kingdom, but in the Free city of Vynelvale, the celebration is citywide. The festival is an opportunity for individuals to cleanse themselves of guilt, shame and even legal responsibility. Typically those planning to participate spend weeks or months leading up to the festival making penance and engaging in acts of contrition for their sins. Those judged to be sincerely contrite and to have appropriately made penance can be forgiven for moral and legal repercussions. The festival lasts 3 days and ends in a feast provided by the church. Gaining forgiveness There are two main ways to gain atonement, moral and legal. Participants buy Penance Tokens from the church (these are very cheap and can be given for free in some circumstances) and then offer them to people they have wronged. They must give a full accounting for their misdeeds and detail what they have done in penance. People offered the penance tokens then usually accept (it is a major taboo to turn down a genuine offer). The token is then placed into a specially prepared ritual fire. If it is destroyed by the fire the atonement is rejected, but if it is untouched or singed then they are forgiven. If a person is not available to give the token to then it is generally offered to a person close to the absent individual, and if this is not possible then a priest of the church may stand in for them. Legal atonement is much the same, but instead of offering to an individual it is done before a gathered group of lawmen and priests. Theoretically, any crime can be forgiven in this way, but sever crimes (wanton murder, treason) are very unlikely to. Those who fail to gain penance are now considered to have legal confessed and been tried, they will likely be sentenced in the coming weeks. Those forgiven are legally forgiven for those crimes (but not any they neglected to mention). The Ritual of Punishment This is an old rite once practised by the church, but no longer condoned. It remains fairly popular and is widely believed by the population to still have divine power. It is mostly just practiced in Vynelvale. A ritually prepared urn, called the Punishment urn, is placed in the centre of a community space (these days mostly inns - the church will remove them from parks and public squares). Anyone who feels slighted by another person may write that person name on a slip of paper and place it into the urn, giving thought to the misdeeds they have done. At the end of the festival, the urns are burned in a fire and Kellos is said to choose several names from it to punish. Punished individuals are said to gain misfortune appropriate to their crimes - so a thief may lose his prize possessions or an adulterer may catch a sexual disease. There is little direct evidence that the Ritual of Punishment still have any divine power, but it's believers point to many 'strange accidents and misfortunes' that seem to befall people in the days and weeks after the festival.